


Halloween drabbles

by Nutriyum_Addict



Category: Parks and Recreation
Genre: Bad Puns, F/M, Halloween, Halloween Costumes, Pumpkins
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-10-21
Updated: 2015-10-21
Packaged: 2018-04-27 11:13:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,393
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5046151
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nutriyum_Addict/pseuds/Nutriyum_Addict
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I'm probably going to do a few Halloween drabbles this year so I'll start posting them here.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Ben and Stephen - pumpkin carving

“No, daddy. Make the eyes scarier!”

Ben frowns for a second and puts the sharp knife down on the table, away from the wide awake six year old. Sonia and Wesley were satisfied with the basic triangle-eyes and smiling, toothy grins that he and Leslie had carved on the first two pumpkins–but not Stephen. Not their little artist.

So, while the other two jack o’lanterns are already out on the front porch, the third pumpkin is still sitting on the dining room table. Hallowed-out but still uncarved.

“Scarier how?”

“Meaner,” Stephen replies, like it’s completely obvious what mean, scary eyes look like.

Ben’s frown stays in place and he reaches for a piece of paper and a pen, offering them to his small son.

“Show me.”

The little boy hunches over the paper and gets to work on mean and scary eyes, so Ben can then carve them into the orange pumpkin’s flesh.

“Are you two still working on his pumpkin?” Leslie asks, coming into the dining room after getting their two other children into bed.

“Yep. He’s very opinionated on exactly how his jack o'lantern should look,” Ben tells his wife, as Leslie joins him in watching their son carefully draw large pointy eyes that kind of look like…hairy stars?

Leslie runs his hands through the little boy’s brown hair as he works carefully on his pumpkin face design.

“Well, it’s almost bedtime. So–”

“Nooooooo! Mommy! Not yet! We’re not done!”

“Yeah, babe,” Ben agrees, smiling at her. “We’re not quite done yet. Just a few more minutes.”

Besides, Ben thinks, Stephen was the only triplet to conk out today in the backseat, on the way back from the pumpkin patch. No doubt his afternoon nap has made him less prepared for bedtime than his two sleepy siblings.

“Like this daddy!” Stephen finally and eagerly pushes the piece of paper at Ben.

He studies the drawing.

Yep, those look like hairy stars…and there’s three of them. He feels like he should maybe ask Leslie to carve these, since she’s a little better at detailed stuff like this, but Ben really wants to do it.

He wants to work on this project with Stephen and get it just right so his son laughs and smiles and then maybe he’ll take a few photos and keep them on his phone forever, so he can always remember this Halloween, when Stephen was six and he and Leslie let him stay up a little past bedtime to finish carving a pumpkin.

And if he’s getting a little emotional over this, Ben doesn’t even need to look at Leslie to know that she’s probably tearing up as she watches him and Stephen work on this together.

He reaches out and touches his hand softly to hers, before asking just to make sure, “And these are monster eyes?”

“Nooooooo. Robot eyes, daddy.”

“But I thought it was a scary monster pumpkin?”

Stephen nods his head quickly. “A scary monster robot pumpkin!”

“Cool,” Ben responds, as he reaches forward and picks the knife back up.


	2. Halloween 2014: The Costume

It’s just a few days until Halloween and Ben is sitting on the bed, waiting, when Leslie finally comes out of the bathroom to model her Halloween costume for him.

They’d been invited to a party at April and Andy’s and although there’s not an official costume contest, Leslie is just competitive enough to have spent the last week getting the perfect outfit together for the event.

For the last few days, she’d been privately working on a Halloween costume that she wouldn’t even tell him any details about. Whenever he’d ask, she’d wave him off and just say that she didn’t want to ruin the surprise.

Well, that’s not quite accurate. Leslie did tell him it was completely amazing and the best costume she’d ever designed.

But now, when she’s dressed up and standing in front of him expectantly, Ben is…confused.

His pregnant wife is a big yellow and purple root vegetable, that much he can figure out, and the costume crazily seems to be even more padded than her currently very rounded belly. But, Leslie has also got a big black robe hanging open over it, large glasses on the bridge of her nose, and a lacy collar around her neck.

Her own blonde hair is tucked up under a dark green, vegetable-top looking wig, with all the hair pulled up in a tight, no-nonsense bun.

“Well?” She asks impatiently, like she has a secret she can’t wait to share with him. “What do you think? Do you get it? Ben? Do you get it?”

Is she a turnip?

A parsnip?

He’s about to ask for a hint but then, all at once, he gets it and starts laughing–huge belly laughs that almost knock him over.

“Oh my god.”

Ben gets a hold of himself, and takes his phone out so he can snap a couple of pictures as she smiles cutely at him. Is it actually possible to get turned on by your wife when she is dressed up like a Supreme Court vegetable?

Yes, he thinks. The answer is yes.

“Babe? Come on, do you know who I am or not?”

Ben grins. “Yep. I do. You are Justice _Ruta Baga Ginsberg_.”

She walks closer, practically beaming. “That’s right. You figured it out!”

“Of course I figured it out. And now, please tell me you’re going to show me how Ruta Baga Ginsberg kisses,” Ben asks, reaching out so that his hands are on her hips (at least where he thinks her hips are), pulling her even closer. Her baby-filled tummy pushes against him and Ben wonders briefly if there’s some vegetable-costume equivalent of a furry.


	3. The Seance

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For the Tumblr Halloween prompt: The triplets, Going to / hosting a seance.

When Leslie rounds the corner upstairs, she hears Sonia’s unmistakable voice telling her brothers to, “close your eyes and hold hands around the table.”

Intrigued, she sneaks around the corner and pokes her head into their six year olds’ bedroom.

“But BoBo doesn’t have hands,” Wesley complains.

“Just grab his wing then.”

All three kids are sitting around the small round table, with assorted stuffed animals helping them form a circle.

“What’s going–-”

Leslie turns around and covers Ben’s mouth before he can say anything else.

“Shhhh, look,” she whispers. They both quietly continue to sneak a peak at their little triplets.

“Li'l Sebastian? Are you here? We’d like to talk to you,” Sonia requests.

Ben pulls her back towards their bedroom. “Are they having a seance? For a mini-horse?”

“I think so,” she pauses. “Oh my god, I have great idea. Stay here.”

Leslie walks the few steps into their bedroom, where she grabs her Li'l Sebastian stuffed animal from the closet and meets Ben back in the hallway.

“Really?” He asks, seeing the toy in her hands. “You’re going to try and scare them with that?”

“I’m not try to _scare_ them. I’m going to make it awesome and make their seance a wonderful success.”

With that, she gets down on her hands and knees and starts slowly pushing the stuffed animal towards the door.

“Are you gong to help?” She asks quietly, turning around to look at him.

“What? Oh, sorry, just enjoying the view, babe.”

But then Ben walks around her and slowly pushes the triplets’ door open while Leslie animatedly uses her hand to gallop the stuffed animal inside. And then she makes a loud _whiney-like_ noise startling all three first-graders.

Sonia screams in surprise, while Stephen runs away and hides in the closet. Wesley stays seated, holding tightly onto BoBo’s ostrich wing, but he looks fairly unsettled by everything.

“Mommy!” Sonia finally squeals.

“Look,” Leslie tells them. “Li'l Sebastian! Your seance worked! He’s right here!”

As she says this, Ben goes to the closet and retrieves Stephen, holding the little boy’s hand as he leads him back into the bedroom.

“It’s okay, honey. It was just mommy. See?” He points to Leslie and stuffed Li’l Sebastian.

“Oh, did that scare you? Stephen, I’m so sorry. It’s okay. I told daddy it might be too scary,” she says, giving her son a big, comforting hug.

“Wait. What? No, that’s not…” Ben trails off and shrugs, instead deciding to just go have a seat on the floor by Wesley, so he can pull the little boy into his lap and tickle him until he giggles.


End file.
